Yelena's eyes flew open -- asleep one moment, she was suddenly wide awake in the next. No sound had awakened her; there were never extraneous sounds in the room she shared with Marya, and any such sounds would be muffled in any case by Marya's thighs pressed against her ears.

It was still nighttime, Yelena knew. At night the lights in the room softened just a bit -- not enough, she was sure, to cause any trouble for the cameras, but enough to suggest sleep to the body.

Marya was still sound asleep, her head between Yelena's thighs. Yelena could feel her daughter's soft exhalations flowing between her buttocks every few seconds, and sensed no other movement.

It was a thought, not a sound, that had brought Yelena so suddenly alert. She didn't know where it had come from. Some inner insight must have whispered it to her, she decided.

You're not a good enough actress, the voice had said to her.

It wasn't an accusation, nor a loss of self-confidence. No one, the voice told her, could keep up indefinitely doing what Yelena had to do. It wasn't humanly possible.

My heart, Yelena realized, has been trying to tell my head that for weeks.

Marya had understood much sooner, because she had no professional training at all, no skills developed by drama coaches, by rehearsal, by focused acting exercises. After the snake pit, Marya had known how crucial it was to seem to be in love with her mother, to pretend insatiable sexual need for Yelena, with no slip-ups allowed, even for an instant. She had known she wasn't capable of that. So, through some self-preservation instinct, she had retreated behind the fantasy of Hélène, and made it real for herself. Now she is Hélène, thought Yelena. And because she believes it with all her heart, she doesn't have to do any acting at all.

It had taken Yelena much longer to see. The insight hadn't come until now, until that faint voice had whispered it in her ear. Because I thought so much of my own skills, she reflected. I thought I could keep pretending forever.

My heart understood some time ago, she told herself. Saw that I need to be truly, honestly in love with Marya, not just pretending. That's why I lose control of my impulses when I begin to think it's time for another session of lovemaking with her. It happens so that I can perform naturally, instead of acting out a role. That same instinct that took over in Marya long ago, tells me now that I'm not a good enough actress to pretend convincingly for days, weeks, months on end. Tells me that it needs to be real. The instinct takes over and makes it real, because it knows it must.

I need to stop resisting. I need to swallow my professional pride and say, it's true, I'm not good enough. And I need to forget the shame that clings to me, telling me what an awful mother I am to do this with my daughter. Shame is a luxury I can't afford here. If I allow it, it will grow until I finally push Marya away at just the wrong time.

Shame is for another world, the outside world, Yelena realized. Not for the insane conditions that are forced on us here. I have nothing to be ashamed of. I have protected my daughter the only way I could. Behavior that would be horribly wrong in the outside world is the right thing here. I can let the shame go. I don't deserve it.

Yelena felt warmth spreading out from her heart, reaching every part of her body. It was peace. It was satisfaction. It was... excitement.

She felt the wetness between her legs. It was familiar, but somehow different. The resistance to it, the dark feeling that her body was dragging her where she shouldn't be going... Yes, that was it. That's what was missing.

Yelena opened her lips -- they had already been against Marya's sex when she'd awakened -- and licked very lightly in a circle around Marya's labia. Marya's thighs tightened against Yelena's ears suddenly as she awoke. Giggling briefly, Marya began returning the favor with her tongue.

Excitement grew. Arms tightened around waists. Both moaning, both sighing, interlocked bodies rocking on the bed. Tongues burrowing deeper. Gasping for breath. Crashing into climax.

After orgasm: peace. That was new.

Yelena felt completely relaxed, glowing. She didn't think she'd ever felt as close to Marya as she did now. I know it is Marya, she thought, marveling. My daughter. Not Hélène. I know who I am. I know who she is. I haven't backed away into fantasy the way she has. I found a different way. All it took was pushing the shame away.

Yelena sighed happily. I'm with my lover, and we can make love as much as we want every day. How rare. She murmured, "I love you, Hélène." Marya usually said it first. On occasions when Yelena had initiated the declaration, she'd always before done it because it was in her mental script, because it seemed to need saying as part of the show. This was different. It seemed to come out of her unbidden, words that she couldn't hold back.

Marya gave Yelena's head a brief squeeze with her thighs, Yelena's waist a quick, tight hug with her arms. "I love you too, Hélène."

Smiling, Yelena drifted back to sleep.

Zlata's eyes shot wide open, as she lay on her back on her bed, forcing herself to think how to kill Anya. An idea suddenly had come to her about something completely different.

Something doesn't make sense, Zlata told herself. Rachel isn't just in Irkhetnia, where no one seems to be looking for her, according to Veronika. She'd been in prison in Irkhetnia. Somehow she had run afoul of Irkhet authorities -- while traveling in Germany! How could that be possible?

When things don't make sense, they might be the key to solving a problem. Zlata's father had told her that many times.

I need to ask her what she is doing in Irkhetnia, Zlata thought. She had to have left Germany on her own, and come here for a reason without telling anyone. Why?

Quickly Zlata got some paper and tried to think of how to ask Rachel about it, in such a way that it might reveal something. Not having any idea what answer Rachel might give was a handicap, since it made it nearly impossible to think of follow-up questions. At last she had something she thought would work. Then she pulled "Hunger Games" off the desk, and more usefully, the dictionary.

Raisa lay on her bed, biting her nails quietly, a habit left to her from childhood that she still fell into under stress.

Anya was going to die, very soon, unless the nurses could somehow stop it happening. If Rachel were found, obviously Anya would be saved as well. The American ambassador could make all that happen, if only he knew.

When Veronika had passed along that note from Zlata and herself about Blondie and Pixie -- about Rachel and Anya -- Raisa had thought about telling the others immediately that she knew how to contact the ambassador. Except she realized immediately she really didn't.

Raisa's cousin Tatyana was a cook at the U.S. embassy. Most Irkhets couldn't get anywhere near the embassy without having a good reason for being there, but like all embassies, the American one did hire staff locally, and those employees had papers giving them permission to come and go as they needed to. Tatyana was inside the embassy every day. She could get any necessary information to the ambassador.

How Raisa might get the crucial information to Tatyana to begin with... There was the problem.

She could easily enough send Tatyana a letter. But the contents of that letter would have to pass through the watchful eyes of the president's security team, and the idea of writing something like "Missing American citizen Rachel Preston is alive and is being held in the People's House against her will" was ridiculous on its face.

To be so close to saving Rachel and Anya, who were regarded by all of the nurses as their patients, their lives being the nurses' personal and professional responsibilities, and to fail to do it, and to see Anya die because of that failure...

Tears ran down the sides of Raisa's face.

Larisa gave Zlata a wan smile from the doorway to her room as Zlata passed by. Zlata wasn't sure Larisa had slept in the three days since the president had assigned her to kill Anya. "Zlata, I think this might work. Come in and tell me what you think."

Zlata saw a large book on pharmaceuticals sitting open on Larisa's desk. She'd heard Larisa request one of Ivan, among other things, the previous day. Larisa pointed to an entry in the book. "This poison. It says here it works in about seven or eight hours. And that it would really be painful. Do you think the president would like that?"

Zlata read the entry with horror, and struggled to push down her initial gasp. She remembered reading about this poison, and many others, in nursing school. She had to get Larisa away from this, and from the entire line of similar ideas.

She worked to put an indulgent smile on her face, and shook her head. "Larisa, you've got to see this from the president's point of view. He doesn't just want Pixie to die, he wants to observe it."

"But..."

"No, listen. Pixie can't move at all, you know? She can't grimace in agony, she can't reach up and grab her throat like she's choking, she can't react at all to anything. And here you are looking at poisons. Everything it's doing to her would be totally invisible! He wants to look at Pixie and see that she's dying. While a poison is working she'd just look like she does every day." Zlata shook her head again. "He'd get mad at you if you wasted his time with an idea like this."

The last comment included the magic words: the president would be mad at you. That, Zlata knew, would be enough to stop Larisa in her tracks permanently, as far as this idea went.

Thank God, thought Zlata, Larisa doesn't know any more than what she's reading in this little brief entry in a book. Zlata knew that with this poison, Anya's death throes would be anything but invisible: twitching muscles at the beginning, gradually becoming hours of spasms and agonizing cramps shaking her body, eventually building to convulsions shortly before death. All of that would be very visible, effects that didn't require voluntary muscular control or ability to move the joints around. The president, with his interest in torture, might very well know all of that, and might think that Larisa had come up with a splendid idea.

Zlata rested her arm across Larisa's shoulders in a friendly way. "Larisa, didn't I tell you I'd handle this? I've already got some good ideas popping around in my head. I work best on my own, so I'm not ready to share yet. But I promise I'll let you know. This isn't something you need to worry about." She frowned. "Look, you really look awful. Your work is done for today. Why don't you get some rest? You won't do anybody any good if you're exhausted and can't think."

Larisa nodded, tears starting to flow as they had so often over the last three days. "I'll try to take a nap."

Zlata hugged her. "Good girl." Treating Larisa as a child seemed to help.

Zlata went back to her room, closing her door. I really have to think of something for this. Larisa is going to keep trying, and pretty soon she'll come up with something I can't bluff her out of. I need my own idea to go up against hers.

She sighed. For some reason, coming up with methods of killing someone she had come to care deeply about didn't come naturally. But she had to try.

Zlata held up the question in front of Rachel.

RACHEL, WHY YOU IN IRKHETNIA?

Rachel looked away, her eyelids remaining motionless. Zlata wondered if Rachel had understood the question, and then whether perhaps she was somehow offended by it. Zlata supposed maybe it did seem rude. Or at least brusque. She wasn't sure what to do. She couldn't word the question more politely on the spot -- any rephrasing would require at least an hour with the dictionary, and couldn't be presented to Rachel in less than seventy-two hours. The other nurses might be happy to let Zlata do the 2 a.m. IV change two nights in a row, but that break in routine would look suspicious to outsiders.

At last Rachel looked back at her intently, and began an eyeblink storm. Zlata ran out of space for the numbers on the front of the paper on which she was scribbling and had to turn it over hurriedly.

It seemed to take way too long to Zlata -- she didn't like staying in the enclosure more than about twenty minutes, and she was sure this was pushing it. As soon as Rachel seemed finished, Zlata quickly kissed her forehead, folded the papers, and barely remembered to start the IV drip before doing her usual stumbling and yawning back to bed.

Zlata stared at the page in front of her: the message from Rachel, at last translated from eyeblinks to numbers, to letters in English words, and finally to Russian. Zlata had only made sketchy guesses as to what Rachel might say. This didn't resemble any of them.

CAME WITH MANDIY [Zlata had needed to purely transliterate that one -- it wasn't in the dictionary] TO SPY PRESIDENT IS BIG DRUG KING SELL DRUGS BIG OPERATION KEEP RECORDS ON LAPTOP IN OFFICE DESK HIDE LAPTOP IN DRAWER LOOK IN DRAWER LAPTOP ALL ABOUT DRUG DEALS NOT LAPTOP ON TOP OF DESK DIFFERENT LAPTOP IN DRAWER

Rachel had obviously, during her long pause before blinking this message, been giving a lot of thought to whether to tell Zlata all this. And she had decided to trust Zlata. Zlata was grateful for the trust -- and terrified to know what she now knew. Zlata understood the effort it took to be as repetitive as Rachel had been, so clearly it was very important to Rachel that the message come through. Zlata dismissed the idea that it was all a paranoid fantasy, because it fit so well with the president Zlata had come to know.

Many new questions suggested themselves. "Mandiy" was probably the name of the other American girl, the one who'd gone missing with Rachel. Zlata wondered what had happened to Mandiy, since Veronika had pointed out it couldn't be Anya. Oh, thought Zlata, Mandiy might be the new "mannequin" set to arrive in a couple of weeks! But why not have her here at the beginning? Why Anya instead of Mandiy?

Zlata wondered whether Rachel had known about the "desk drawer laptop" at the outset of her -- it sounded so strange to call it this -- spy mission. Probably not, she decided. She's been in the president's office every day for weeks, Zlata reminded herself. She may have figured it out by watching, considering it relates to what she came to Irkhetnia to find out to begin with.

A spy story, Zlata thought. Great. As if everything weren't already complicated enough. And I'm right in the middle of it.

Zlata's first impulse was to keep what she knew to herself, so at least the other nurses would be safe. They wouldn't be, though, she realized. If anyone finds out I know, they're going to assume Veronika and Raisa know, no matter how much they protest their ignorance. And maybe they can figure out some way this information will help. I certainly can't.

She started writing a new note for Veronika and Raisa.

ONE WEEK LATER

Raisa's stomach ached badly. She knew it was just from the tension, not a virus she might spread around. The tension, she thought grimly, is spread around enough already as it is.

Last night Raisa had written down most of what the nurses had learned about Rachel and Anya, writing it in tiny letters so it could all fit on a single sheet of paper. Taking the paper with her to bed, she had given the appearance of falling asleep while reading through it, and then, hiding her movements under the bedsheet, she had folded it into a small packet, its ends tucked in so it wouldn't come undone -- there had been no danger in writing it, since all of the nurses were often seen writing letters to family and were all supposedly exchanging ideas among themselves for Anya's demise, but folding it this way would have looked suspicious. The message was meant for her cousin Tatyana, the embassy cook, and included a plea to pass it on to the American ambassador.

Raisa knew Tatyana would be willing. Tatyana was deeply involved in an underground group, with grand dreams of undermining and overthrowing the government. Raisa suspected everyone in the country, or at least in the city, knew someone who was mixed up in such a thing.

Tatyana's group was careful about what they were doing, at least. Mostly they received information from other such groups around the country. They hadn't been active in distributing leaflets or anything as open as that. And they took care especially about inviting anyone new to join the group. Raisa knew that firsthand. Tatyana had brought Raisa along to a meeting once, without telling her what it was going to be about. Raisa knew several other people there, which was partly the reason Tatyana had been allowed to invite her: no one could attend a meeting without being cleared by at least three members who knew the invitee personally, and having the visitor attend a meeting before knowing the purpose of the group was an additional safety measure: in a sense, the invitee became part of the conspiracy by actually attending, rather than simply hearing about it by word of mouth, so that the invitee would have a personal stake in not revealing the group's existence. That was the theory, anyway. Raisa was skeptical that invited guests would keep their mouths shut for that reason alone, but it's hard to argue with success: Tatyana's group had not been caught. Raisa was sure her family would tell her if anything bad had happened to Tatyana, so she was still out there, free.

Raisa, however, had not felt personally safe, surrounded by a dangerous conspiracy. She had sat through the meeting, but had firmly told Tatyana afterwards she would not go to another. Tatyana had been upset, and asked Raisa to swear on the honor of the family that she would never tell what she had seen. Raisa was happy to swear to that. She had no interest in turning Tatyana in. She loved Tatyana. She just hadn't wanted to be part of what her cousin was doing.

That love was the trouble now. Raisa believed she knew a way she could get her written note to Tatyana. But she couldn't get past the knowledge that she would be seriously endangering Tatyana by trying to do so. The note couldn't get to Tatyana without in some way being addressed to her: her name, her address, and all of the information Raisa was trying to send her would all be written down on paper together, and Tatyana would be in major trouble if the note were intercepted -- and interception seemed very likely, because there was no way around the fact that the note would have to pass through other hands along the way before it got to her. And it wouldn't be Tatyana's fault! It would be Raisa's! Raisa had understood, from the moment she'd read the president's note about killing Anya, that there was no hope her work for the president could end in any other way than by going to prison. She could never be allowed her freedom, ever again, knowing that the president was abusing prisoners, knowing that he had ordered her and the others to participate in a murder. Of course, she knew far more than that now, but the abuse and murder were things the president already knew that Raisa knew about.

So passing the note to Tatyana didn't expose Raisa to any dangers she wasn't already facing. That wasn't the problem. It was that Raisa would potentially be throwing Tatyana's life away at the same time.

I can't do that, Raisa told herself, the words repeating again and again in her head. Trying to save Rachel and Anya is more likely than not to get Tatyana thrown into prison. I can't take that on myself.

Raisa grimaced. The pain in her stomach ripped at her again.

Zlata, on her stomach on her bed, her face buried against her arms, wondered at the lack of response from Veronika and Raisa about the Anya problem -- the one about saving her, not the one about killing her. There were only about ten days left. Zlata was sure the others cared as much about the girls as she herself did. But she wasn't seeing evidence of that.

She heard a throat clear. She lifted her head, and turned to look at the door.

Larisa stood in the doorway. Hesitantly, she said, "Zlata, what do you think about knives?"

Zlata didn't like the sound of this at all. She said slowly, "What about them?"

Larisa held her hands apart, and slowly brought them closer. Zlata could see Larisa's hands shaking from where she lay. "There could be knives, closing in on Pixie from both sides."

Zlata was sure, now, that Larisa had completely lost contact with the idea of Anya being a live human. She was so lost in the need to please the president that she really was thinking of Anya as an object, a prop for putting on a show. Zlata stared at Larisa, her mind spinning at full speed.

Ah! thought Zlata at last. Got it. "Larisa, once you start using knives, at any moment one of them can cut an important artery and Pixie would be dead in ten, fifteen minutes. You know that's not what the president wants."

Larisa's face fell. She'd been so hopeful. Mumbling "Okay," she returned to her room.

Zlata worked to calm herself, to untie the knots in her stomach. Perhaps, she hoped, I've got Larisa away from the idea of bloody endings altogether. Zlata knew Larisa could have created an ideal plan, if she'd kept working on it: If a mechanism were set up so that the knives simply came closer and closer over a period of hours, not cutting Anya until the very end, the president would be thrilled with the idea, and Anya would live only as long as it took to construct the mechanism.

Why is it so hard, Zlata wanted to know, to find a way to tell anyone on the outside about Rachel? There's a whole world surrounding this building, billions of people in it. Is there no way to let any of them know?

She sat up. She realized she had been so focused on somehow telling the world that a missing American girl was here in the president's mansion, a goal that seemed out of reach, that she had overlooked the fact that Anya lived here, in Irkhetnia. Perhaps in this very same city. If Anya had family here, Zlata might write to them, pretending they were her own family. She might somehow hint, without mentioning Anya by name, that she knew where Anya was. ("I just saw your daughter recently...") She would have to work out just how to say it, but the first thing to do was get some information from Anya.

That would have to be done carefully as well. Zlata shouldn't tell Anya that she was going to try to contact Anya's family. That would get her hopes up, thinking of rescue, and it would be way too cruel, considering how slim the hope was.

Zlata, after about an hour, decided she had a way to say it sufficiently vaguely.

Anya read the handwritten sheet the nurse, Zlata, held up in front of her. Anya, I wanted to get to know you better. I have been taking care of you all this time. My father, Vitaly Chermanov, and my mother Tamara are teachers. They live in Pretsk. I have a sister Ludmila who wants to be a dancer. I was always too clumsy for that. How about you? Can you tell me about your family?

Anya closed her eyes. She knew immediately that she didn't want to talk about her aunt. Her aunt was probably glad Anya had disappeared. One less mouth to feed, less trouble with her search for a rich husband. And it hurt too much to think about her late parents. Zlata seemed to have a normal family she cared about. I don't have anything like that, Anya thought.

At last she started blinking the thought that came to the forefront of her mind.

I AM WITH RCHL I HAVE ONLY HER

Most nights when she blinked, she wasn't able to smile. This was one of those nights when she could.

What, thought Zlata, am I supposed to do with that?

Another idea shot down, and there is so little time left.

It just deepens the mystery of how Rachel and Anya could be so close.

Zlata stared at the curtain, stunned. She had just realized that she knew what that three-blink signal was, the one she so often saw Anya and Rachel exchange. She knew exactly what it meant.

I don't even need to bother asking about it to make sure, she thought. I'm sure.

She gave Anya her usual kiss on the forehead, turned on the IV drip, and left quickly, before Anya could see her tears start to flow.

ONE WEEK LATER

Lying on her bed, Zlata sighed softly, and turned her attention back to methods of killing Anya. If she didn't do it, then someone else, maybe Larisa, maybe the president himself, would come up with something really horrible. It was getting close to the last minute. Of the three-week period the president had specified, now only a few days were left.

It had to be prolonged and visible. That was the president's rule. But it had to be painless. That was Zlata's own rule. It was hard to bring all that together. I just feel, she thought, like I can't breathe...

She sat up suddenly. That's it! she thought.

Seal up Anya in a glass box, like a fish tank. It's easy enough to calculate how much oxygen is in the box, and how fast Anya would use it up. Or wait, she thought, probably more important to measure how fast the carbon dioxide concentration built up.

But we can figure that out. And figure from that how big the box needs to be so that it's got, say, six or seven hours of air in it.

And the effects would be visible. Not dramatic, but visible. Anya would gradually breathe more and more deeply, struggling for oxygen as less of it became available. And she would, over time, turn blue.

And it won't hurt! Zlata told herself. She'll just pass out near the end, and that will be that.

Of course she will be frightened. Terrified. She'll know what's happening.

Zlata thought about whether to tell Anya beforehand. At least tell her what it will be like, tell her it won't be painful. That she'll just go to sleep and not wake up. Tell her we wanted to make it quiet and peaceful for her.

Zlata couldn't decide which would be better for Anya: knowing or not knowing. She would ask the others what they thought.

It's still too early to say anything about this out loud, she warned herself. I have to let at least another day go by. It might take a couple more days after that to get the box built, right when the three weeks is up. That's as far as we can push it.

Zlata hurriedly wrote down her idea, so she could check her calculations of the size of the box with Veronika and Raisa. Then she decided the first thing to do was tell Larisa. It would be such a relief to her. Zlata took a deep breath and left her room.

Larisa had actually seemed more calm for the last two days. Zlata had no idea how to read her anymore, but hoped it was a good sign. "What's that, Larisa?" Larisa was at her desk, writing something.

Larisa looked up and gave Zlata a small smile. "I'm working on the disposal plan for Pixie. I'm almost done."

Zlata's stomach clenched. She tried to keep her voice calm. "Larisa, honey, I was going to do that. Remember? I've already got something worked out. I was just waiting for the right time. Want to hear it?"

Larisa smiled again. "Thank you, but there's no need. This job was mine to do. Design is what the president hired me for."

"Design"? thought Zlata. That's the category Larisa thinks the murder of a young woman fits into? And she imagines now she was "hired" for it? Not kidnapped? Zlata held her hand out. "C-can I see it?"

Larisa handed the handwritten page to Zlata. "Sorry it's so messy. I'm going to copy it over neatly before I turn it in."

Zlata read. She tried to keep the horror out of her face, though she felt sure she was turning red.

At least, thought Zlata, I did get her away from pursuing poisons. And blood. In some ways, though, this was actually worse.

Larisa's thoughts had, oddly enough, paralleled Zlata's to some extent. Like Zlata, Larisa had come to visualize Anya expiring in a glass fish tank.

In Larisa's case, though, the intended cause of death was drowning.

"The mannequin should be sitting cross-legged in a water-tight glass enclosure, something like an aquarium," read Larisa's proposal. "She would sit in a very relaxed posture, her hands at her sides, the fingers curled around handles attached to the bottom of the aquarium. Over a period of, say, eight hours, the tank would slowly fill with water until it is up over her head. Holding the handles will keep her from floating upward."

Yes, thought Zlata grimly. We wouldn't want her body's natural buoyancy to save her, would we? It was an additional especially cruel touch, Zlata realized, that Anya might save herself by letting go of the handles -- but she wouldn't be able to.

"I don't know how to figure out how fast the water should flow into the tank, but I'm sure you have people who can handle that part. The water might come from another tank overhead, slowly emptying down into the one the mannequin is sitting in, so that it is just enough to fill her tank without overflowing onto the floor.

"The larger mannequin would sit, also cross-legged, facing the front of the aquarium. A bowl of candy would be balanced on her left thigh, as if she is watching a movie in a theater. The fingers of her right hand will be spread across her sex lips as if she is stroking them, and her left hand will cup her left breast, a finger playing with the nipple."

Larisa reached for the paper. "I just want to add a couple more things."

Zlata couldn't move. Her breath was whistling in and out between clenched teeth. As before, her mind spun furiously, trying to find something about the idea that the president wouldn't like. Nothing was coming to her. This wasn't like poison, which Zlata had persuaded Larisa would be too "invisible" for the president's taste. And it wasn't like stabbing, which Zlata had convinced Larisa would end too quickly. This had all the required ingredients.

This was so much worse than Zlata's suffocation plan. In Zlata's plan, obviously Anya, sealed up in an increasingly stuffy box, would know she was going to die, but it was such a quiet death. And the closer it came, the less Anya would perceive it: her mind would grow fuzzier, less able to process what was happening, less able to react emotionally. She would ease into death, barely noticing.

Not like this. Not like drowning.

By Larisa's plan, Anya would spend hours feeling death on her skin, creeping slowly upward. Her terror would grow in proportion. Every fiber of her being would scream at her to get away from it, to fight her way free, but her body would be unable to respond, unable to move a centimeter.

And Rachel... Oh my God, thought Zlata.

Rachel would see it all coming. And she would know that she was sitting watching it with a bowl of candy, as if she was there seeking entertainment. And posed masturbating, as if she was getting off on watching Anya die.

Zlata wished... She wished so many things right now, but one of them was that she had never found out Anya's name, and Rachel's name, so that there were no personalities involved, so that she could simply think of them as "the mannequins" like Larisa now did. Larisa herself, back at the prison, had taken such pains to remind all of the nurses that these were real, living, feeling women, an attitude that the president had afterward somehow blown right out of Larisa's mind.

And Zlata wished, so much, that she had never found out how strongly Anya and Rachel were attached to each other.

Zlata managed to stammer, "Let... Let me tell you about my own idea..." But as soon as she ran the suffocation plan back through her head, she knew it couldn't measure up. It was on the same level as watching grass grow.

Larisa reached again for the paper Zlata didn't recall she was still holding. Zlata shoved it back at Larisa, and ran out of the room.

In her own room, she switched on the television. It was a natural thing to do by now. It made it appear that her mind was occupied by something other than what she really was thinking about. And the sound from the speaker covered her soft moaning.

Zlata had been sickly as a child, often hospitalized. She had idolized all of her nurses, even the sour, frowning ones, for one reason alone: that they worked so hard to make her feel better. She didn't assign that credit to the doctors. It was the nurses who were around all the time, asking if her chest hurt, giving her water when she was thirsty, giving her an extra blanket if she was chilled. She had never imagined anything she wanted more than to become a nurse herself.

After her professional training she had signed up for the army, with a romantic notion of meeting a young, handsome soldier with whom she could fall in love. Reality never seemed to measure up to romantic notions, but she had never lost the satisfaction in helping the ill feel better that had driven her career choice to begin with.

And now, she thought, I'm killing Anya. It doesn't matter that it will be Larisa whose plan determines how the killing is done, or that it would all be done at the order of the president. If I go along with it, if I keep doing the job I've been assigned, I'm as responsible for her death as anyone here.

And Rachel! Zlata squeezed her eyes tightly closed. I'll be putting her through an emotional trauma that will cover all of the rest of her life with sticky mud she can't wash off. She will never forget the horror of what she'd going to see. She will never be the same. Never again emotionally healthy. I will be doing that to her.

There has to be a way to stop this.

She got up and ran into the bathroom. The contents of her stomach were looking to get out.